Facebook Unveils New Organ Donor Option to Timeline

Facebook organ donor option could save millions of lives around the World.

Choice

It was recently hinted at and now Facebook have unveiled a new organ donor status option for Timeline, a move designed to help more than 114,000 people in the U.S. and millions more around the world who are waiting for a life-saving heart, kidney or liver transplant. Facebook users who are already organ donors can add that information to their Facebook Timelines, and those who are not organ donors can find links to official organ donation registries and instantly enroll. “We want to make it simple,” said Zuckerberg. “You just put in the state or country that you are from so we can help link you to the official registries.” All you need to do is go to your Timeline, click on “Life Event” and then “Health & Wellness.” Then, you’ll see the option for “Organ Donor.” At that point, you can add when and where you registered and your personal story.

Organ Donation Awareness

“Many of those people — an average of 18 people per day –- will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need,” Facebook notes in a blog entry explaining the move. “Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis.”

Zuckerberg says his friendship with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who had received a liver transplant before he died last year, helped spur the idea. According to The New York Times, around 7,000 people die in the US each year while waiting for an organ transplant. This is the number that Facebook hopes to lower with its wide network of 161 million members in the US.